School refusal, sometimes called ‘school phobia’ is a complex and often contentious issue effecting rising numbers of children, but coping with this issue can tear families apart and leave children with lasting effects.

In Can’t Go, Won’t Go Mike Fortune-Wood looks at the scale of the problem and how families are treated by a range of statutory authorities. Interspersed with moving accounts from families who have struggled with school refusal, sometimes over a decade or more, this important and ground-breaking book sign-posts the need for better communication and strategies from service providers from schools to psychologists and suggests that the current trend to either medicalise or demonise children who refuse to go to school will only add to society’s problems as well as damaging the individuals concerned. He also documents an alternative approach; that of removing children from school to home educate them, suggesting that far from leading to disaster (as professionals often predict) this can become a life-enhancing decision.

This is the best kind of engaged research; full of information and meticulous in its willingness to analyse a problem fully, but also humane and helpful.